Any Ipods/Itunes/Computer Experts Out There?

[kcjodih]

I hate technology! or technology hates me Anyway here's the scenario and I hope someone can help. We have computer number one, about 4 years old. Children both get ipods last Christmas as gifts. Computer goes in many times during the year for repairs. Finally in August I break down and buy another one and we keep this one just for word processing since the computer guy says it wouldn't be worth much.

Now here's the problem and I haven't looked at it for more than 10 minutes and then my head started hurting and I gave up. The children had to install itunes onto computer 2 and set up their account again. When they did they said they were able to purchase more songs but that they can't access the old songs that were on their itunes before on computer one. Shouldn't these just merge...or they add new songs to the existing ones regardless of the computer they're on? Or have they done something wrong?

One last question, my son said that when he downloaded some newly purchased songs onto his ipod the other day it totally erased the 25 songs he had on there. He can get those from the old computer/itunes on it but is paranoid it will then erase the ones he just bought and loaded from the new computer.

What on earth is going on, what are they doing wrong? My son is 12 and the itunes thing is fairly new to him and my daughter who started loading right away last Christmas is clueless like her mom and I don't even have one or want one!!

Please someone help! All that money to purchase those a year ago, the money invested in the itunes cards and they aren't even enjoying it because of all of this. TIA!

 

[Admin Greg]

It's certainly not intuitive or that easy. I believe apple let's you move the ipod from one computer to another 5 times without having to call them. This is done for music protection. With the ipod plugged in have them "authorize" the new itunes program under the store tab link at the top. Have they done this? Have them sign in. Then itunes should download all the old songs off their ipod.

 

[Sheila]

We transferred all the old music to an external drive, then use the external on the new computer & just add songs to that same file.

 

[chefann]

iPods aren't 2-way, when you sync them to the computer. So if there was music on the iPod that wasn't yet on the new computer, that would have been erased. Ideally, you should have copied the data files containing the music from the old computer onto the new one when you switched systems.

 

[robochick84]

As the "IT expert" ... don't use iTunes, for many of the reason's already stated above.

I use it, but only on my newest iPod that is under warranty and to only "sync" music from "My Music" folder to "iTunes". Never depend on Apple/iTunes to do anything for you.

My older iPod's that are not under the one year warranty now run Rock Box, and act just like and other external drive.

 

[ShellBeach]

They should be able to use the itunes menu option Store > Transfer Purchases to get the songs from their ipods onto the new PC.
A lot of people think apple keeps the music on a server so it can be downloaded to every PC they use, which is not the case.

 

[chefann]

Of course, you wouldn't be having the issues if you used a Mac instead of a Windoze machine.